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Wii Review Round-Up 39

Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Skies

And here was me thinking Nintendo games always got lame names for the American release. Well, awkward sub-title aside this is a cracking arcade shooter that really outdoes similar downloadable titles like Shootanto and Zombie Panic in Wonderland – not to mention arcade “classics” like Space Harrier.

Run or hover with the Nunchuk and shoot baddies and background objects with the Remote – simple as pie (if you like gimped controls you can go for the dual stick option via the Classic Controller, but seriously, don’t). It’s a good thing the controls are intuitive because the action is madcap. You move your character about on-screen, so it’s more than just another “rails-shooter” and you have stragic decisions to make in whether or not you want to shoot or use melee attacks (also handy for blocking shots) against nearby enemies; and then there’s the trade-off of being defenceless or inflicting major damage by charging a special attack.

The graphics are amazingly fluid and feature crazy scrolling backgrounds and screen-filling bosses. The fact that Nintendo seems to be relying upon word of mouth or the target audience just being “in the know” is positively criminal and I hope they’ll give it some kind of marketing rather than let it sink into obscurity like Disaster: Day of Crisis.

There’s seven stages and multiple difficulty levels, but let me tell you “Easy” doesn’t really describe the level of challenge at the lowest setting! There’s another character to play with which changes things up slightly and a two-player co-op mode (though only one character on-screen – with all the craziness it’s probably for the best). Online leaderboards for European and North American scores is the cherry on top.

Kudos to Treasure for a job well done and thanks to Nintendo for publishing it outside of Japan so everyone can get a taste of the good stuff!